Intel's 22nm "Silvermont" Atom has 3D transistors, coming in 2013

Speaking with anonymous industry sources, CNET has received fresh details about Intel's upcoming Atom processors. The chipmaker is reportedly developing a brand new system-on-a-chip architecture infused with its recently announced 3D transistors. Codenamed "Silvermont," the chip will fully capitalize on Intel's 22nm fabrication and tri-gate transistors to deliver drastically improved integration, performance and power efficiency.

While that sounds great, you're probably looking for some numbers to back the hype. Unfortunately, it seems Silvermont's specifications and generational advancements remain under lock and key. For what it's worth, when Intel unveiled its 3D transistors last week it claimed 22nm parts with the tri-gate technology will boost performance by 37% while reducing power consumption by 50% over the company's existing 32nm chips.

However, that announcement largely focused on Intel's next-generation Ivy Bridge processors, the 22nm shrink of Sandy Bridge, also armed with 3D transistors. In other words, we don't know how those figures translate to the company's ultra-low-voltage chips -- and it'll likely be a while before we find out. Intel's 32nm Atom, codenamed Cedarview, is due sometime in the second half of 2011, while Silvermont isn't expected to launch until 2013.

In slightly less speculative news, CPU-World has published the specs of three new Sandy Bridge-based Celeron processors: the G440, G530 and G540. The first is a 35W single-core chip with a 1.6GHz CPU clock and 650/1000MHz GPU clock. The other two are 65W parts with an 850/1000MHz GPU clock, but the CPU clock differs by 100MHz (2.4GHz versus 2.5GHz). All three carry 2MB of cache and will only have "basic" core features.